How Many Mileage Millionaires Are There?

According to this CNN.com article (disclosure: yes, I’m the lead for the piece) 300,000 people have earned at least 1 million miles in a frequent flyer account. I’m surprised the figure is that low, actually.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Congrats on the article! Don’t tell my wife you swept yours off to Europe for dinner, please….

  2. Congrats, Gary.

    Any guesses as to how many people might have over 10 million miles? If there are 300K millionaires, I’m going to guess there are 30,000 ten-millionaires.

  3. yeah, the article doesn’t do well to distinguish between just earning miles in an account and FLYING miles that would of course earn miles. If one is with AA, or LH the oppty to greatly increase the mileage account balance WITHOUT flying i great. Just as an example.

    I think if we look at MILES FLOWN, the 300K sounds a bit more reasonable, but still low.

    I for one, have probably earned over 2.5M miles over a lifetime, having FLOWN over 2.5M miles all in between various airlines and private jet travel. That is a lot of radiation, i’m surprised I still have hair!

    In would in indeed be very interesting for the airlines to do a study, and combine the information and scrap it and cleanse it of any personal data (so as not to give up valuable info) so the world could know.

  4. So that’s what you look like!

    Gary’s picture has long been on the blog’s “About” page, for those who can’t get enough of his physiognomy.

  5. Gary,

    A friend sent me the link to that article, and when I saw the picture I told him that I am a regular reader of your blog – and that he has benefited from some of the advice learned from what I have read here. His response: “THAT’S where you found out about…” Ummm….yeah….ooops. Now I don’t look like Superman.

    Kudos for the cool article. And, I feel bad for the commenters on said article who clearly just don’t get it.

  6. 1. I remember your notes on “that” dinner, as well as on your honeymoon trip, and am very happy for you.
    2. I, too, am amused by many of the comments to the CNN article.
    3. To paraphrase Chris Matthews, just reading about these achievements send a “tingle up my leg”. And I really view them as achievements. I guess that’s what separates those who do from those who don’t.

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